MovieChat Forums > John Carter (2012) Discussion > Why didn't they just film the damn book

Why didn't they just film the damn book


There is a lot of good stuff in this film and if it's been a while that's what I remember. Then I rewatch it and get annoyed. All that rubbish at the start and then mixing in elements of the second book and adding immortal planet destroying baddies. If they'd just stuck to the basic story we'd have got a better film and even possibly sequels - there are a lot of books after all.

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How boring would that have been - just focusing a camera on a book for 2 hours.

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It's called 'empowering books'

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From what I saw of this movie, it would have been better.

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Nah, I'm sure they'd turn the pages too.

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LOL. Nice.

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I agree. To be honest, I'm not sure why this film wasn't successful other than it was released maybe just a couple of years too early. With the array of mediocre superhero films that have become monsters at the box office I think this film would be a hit if it was released today.

I enjoyed the story, didn't think the acting was awful, has lots of CGI and has an "epic" atmosphere to it; all the makings of a modern blockbuster. I haven't seen it in years, but I remember watching it and thinking it wasn't nearly as bad as the critics made it out to be and was enjoyable for what it is. Maybe we'll get a reboot someday.

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I like this film but I think the biggest problem is that came out too late. Audiences that went to see John Carter probably left the theater thinking it was a copy of Star Wars and similar films instead of being the inspiration for those films.

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Um....they kinda did, but with a few flourishes and some changes that needed to be made.

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The books were about what was called "International Judaism" and Burroughs was an atheist. After WWII he backpedaled on the theme of the books as he felt badly about it.

However, I thought that given the religious wars we are involved with they would actually use the "religious cults are controlling the world" and we are suffering for it theme. But, they gutted all the themes from the books completely, thus making it an empty meaningless film.

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The books were not about "International Judaism", they were about a guy from Earth who ends up on Mars. And Burroughs never felt "badly" about anything. If he regretted anything, he felt bad about it. To feel badly is to be inept at feeling.

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I WATCH JOHN CARTER LIKE ONCE A YEAR..ITS A LOT OF FUN.

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They never do that, do they. They messed with Tintin as well, to no good effect. Dune got massively changed. Even a simple story like The Hobbit got massively changed.

Hollywood always deems it knows better, often throwing out what made the original property such a success in the first place.

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SUCCESS A HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

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But people continue to read it. It stays in print.

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Actually by all accounts the only real issue with John Carter wasn't ticket sales. It sold a helluva lot of tickets in theaters, much more than most movies by comparison. The real issue is that they spent more than double of what they actually needed to in the making of it because Stanton (the director) used the same method as he did with Pixar's animated films. He literally ended up shooting the entire movie twice, which required rebuilding a lot of big sets twice. John Carter actually made quite a bit at the box office. In other words, they spent so much making it that despite some level of success, it wasn't enough to justify a sequel and is considered a major flop financially as a result.

To add some perspective, in 2014 only 90 movies out of the 316,773 total movies theatrically released since 1888, a meager .03%, had grossed over $614 million at the box office, the approximate amount “John Carter” would had to have made to turn a profit (a studio exec commented prior to its release that if it didn’t make around $700 million they wouldn’t do a sequel). In 2014 “John Carter” was ranked 361 of that 316,773 total number of theatrically release movies in ticket sales, meaning it drew in more than 99.89% of all movies made since 1888. So although the subject was somewhat niche, a lot of people actually still saw it.

So to sum up, the issue wasn't that as compared to most other films people didn't go see it in theaters. Although it didn't have a very broad scope of appeal, given it's subject and nature, quite a few people did actually go see it. The real issue was that Disney spent way more making it than they needed to because of the inefficient method with which it was filmed.
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That is an excellent and informative post. Thank you.

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[deleted]

Sure thing!

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Which is interesting and I thank you for the reply. But my complaint was they would have had a better film if they had filmed the book. Which is something that holds true for many a Hollywood movie.

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I agree 100%. The long, pointless framing added nothing to the film, and all the extraneous elements felt like a committee agreed that the film needed "more stuff!" Had they gone with a straightforward translation of the book to the screen, I think they would have ended up with a far better film that would have made money, and justified its quarter-billion dollar price tag. And, they would have material for 9 sequels that audiences would have been clamoring to see.

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I would agree that I'd personally have liked it more, but I don't agree on an objective level that "they would have ended up with a far better film", or in other words I highly doubt it would have made more money than it did. Possibly even less.

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Who can say for sure? I definitely believe a film that stuck closely to the book would have been a marked improvement over the action-movie-by-committee hodgepodge we got, and that would have led to better critical reviews, better audience score, and significantly more money at the box office. We'll never know, unless at some future point in time another version is filmed that does follow the book.

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that Hurt Dune(1984) adaptation as well also The Book is Hard PG-13 shouldve been shopped at A Different studio John Carter is Gritty as Dune WB, Universal or Paramount shouldve done it

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I don’t entirely disagree with that. I would state that I personally would have liked the movie even more than I did (much more, actually) had it stuck closer to the book. Generally speaking, however, a movie has to appeal to the broadest audience possible to sell tickets and put butts in theaters seats. Sticking to the book would have almost certainly rendered it much less successful than it was. Would the primary demographic for theaters, 16 to 24-year-old millennials, have really liked a movie with an archaic, sexist macho lead character? Hell no. Word of mouth would have killed the film in one weekend. Having said that, I personally would have preferred a much less emo, more macho John Carter character, just maybe tamped down a bit.

It also has to be condensed into 2 hours from what would probably be about a 20-hour movie if shot verbatim from the books it pulled from. Choices must be made. But I would definitely agree that I personally would have liked it better if it had stuck closer to the plot and story of the books it was based on. In fact, I would have preferred that the first film of what was intended to be a franchise had adapted only elements from A Princess of Mars, and then brought the Therns in during sequels like the books, instead of having them be such a prominent component of the story right out of the gate.

But ultimately, we can't judge a movie by its source material. It must be assessed solely off its own merits. The source material is largely irrelevant, and trying to compare the two is only applicable to personal taste, not what will sell tickets. The bottom line is that compared to most movies John Carter did very well, in the top 1% of all time earners at the box office worldwide. So the problem wasn’t with selling tickets. The problem was with its unusual production methodology that required Disney to dump much more money into it than they needed to (about double by all accounts) for the type of movie it was.

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